A conventional Power Distribution Unit (PDU) is an assembly of electrical outlets (also called receptacles) that receive electrical power from a source and distribute the electrical power to one or more separate pieces of electronic equipment having respective power cords plugged into respective outlets of the PDU. PDUs are used in many applications and settings such as, for example, in or on electronic equipment racks. One or more PDUs are commonly located in an equipment rack (or other cabinet), and may be installed together with other devices connected to the PDU such as environmental monitors, temperature and humidity sensors, fuse modules, or communications modules that may be external to or contained within the PDU housing. A PDU that is mountable in an equipment rack or cabinet may sometimes be referred to as a Cabinet PDU or CDU for short.
A common use of PDUs is supplying operating power for electrical equipment in computing facilities, such as enterprise data centers, multi-tenant hosting environments like colocation facilities, cloud computing, and other data center types. Such computing facilities may include electronic equipment racks that comprise rectangular or box-shaped housings, sometimes referred to as a cabinet or a rack, and associated components for mounting equipment, associated communications cables, and associated power distribution cables. Electronic equipment may be mounted in such racks so that the various electronic devices (e.g., network switches, routers, servers and the like) are aligned vertically, one on top of the other, in the rack. Multiple PDUs may be used to provide power to the electronic equipment where redundant configurations are required. Multiple racks may be oriented side-by-side, with each containing numerous electronic components and having substantial quantities of associated component wiring located both within and outside of the area occupied by the racks.
As will be readily recognized, space within equipment racks is valuable, with maximization of computing resources for any given volume being desirable. Therefore, it is desirable to ensure that the components within the equipment rack have maximum up-time. To accomplish this, many components include redundant power supplies connected to redundant PDUs in order to reduce the possibility that equipment will go down due to lack of power. Redundant PDUs require twice the number of power cables as compared to single PDU configurations. Accordingly, management of the associated power distribution cables can become problematic.